Page 10

I CAN’T STOP STARING at the ring. A shiny object from which I can’t turn away.

Diamonds are supposed to be a girl’s best friend. Just not mine. Probably another personality defect.

My second husband, Martin, proposed in the middle of a Central Park carriage ride, presenting a ring with a stone almost as big as this.

I eventually ended up giving the ring back to him—throwing it at him like a fastball, to be more precise—after I discovered he’d been cheating on me, on multiple occasions, starting in the first year of our marriage.

And then even later, before my miscarriage.

“See if you can regift,” I told Martin that night. “If anybody can pull that off with one of your girls on the side, my money’s on you.”

Only now it’s Ben Kalinsky doing the proposing, and I still can’t look away from the diamond.

What I can do is start to cry.

It’s not just because of the proposal. It’s because of Ben Kalinsky, who is every good, kind, honest, and caring thing that Martin never was.

Now here he is, kneeling in front of me, asking me to marry him in front of God and Rip the dog.

I’m standing on this beach hearing something I never expected— didn’t think I even wanted—ever to hear again.

Until he came along.

Until he chose to love me for all the right reasons, even after he learned I was sick.

There are a lot of reasons why I’m fighting so hard for my life. One of them is how much I love being a lawyer, and how alive that still makes me feel, even now. But the biggest reason is this man kneeling in front of me.

Now I’m really crying, full out, chest heaving, gasping for air. This isn’t the kind of middle-of-the-night crying I do in front of Rip.

This is different.

Much.

Ben smiles up at me, making no move to get up.

“Don’t cry,” he says.

I can’t make myself stop—or start breathing.

“I rehearsed a longer speech,” he continues. “I can recite it another time. But for now, I just want you to please say yes.”

When I’m able to speak, this is the best I can manage:

“No.”

The tears keep rolling down my cheeks. Maybe he thinks it’s the emotion of the moment. And it is. Just not entirely the way he thinks.

“No, you don’t want to marry me?” he says.

He stands now, and gently wipes the tears off my cheeks with his free hand, the ring box still open in the other.

Somehow he is still smiling.

“Yes, I do want to marry you,” I say, the words barely making it out of my throat. “But no, I can’t … I’m so sorry.”

He reaches over again and brushes more tears away. Even now, he wants to take care of me.

I love him, in a way I’ve never loved anyone.

I know he loves me, even though being with me is the reason he’d gotten beaten half to death and then shot.

All of that happening to a small-town vet.

Yet here we are, and those eyes are just so damn kind, because so is he.

As unflappable as he is, there has to be a part of him, big part, embarrassed that the ring is still in the box and not on my finger.

I’ve always felt he gave me so much more than I gave him. Now it’s happening all over again, in the best and most beautiful moment I have had in my so-called life for a long time.

And maybe ever.

I look down and see that Rip is standing next to Ben. He always knows when something is wrong. Suddenly he barks. It briefly makes me smile. Some emotional-support dog he is.

“I want to—but I just can’t—” I say. I’m stammering and I know it. “Can you understand that. It’s my cancer—the trial—not knowing how long—it’s all too much for me right now.”

“It’s okay,” he says in a gentle voice. “Really, it’s okay.” I can barely hear him over the sound of the waves. “You don’t have to apologize, for anything.”

I want to tell him to stop being so damned nice for once, it’s only making me feel worse.

But I don’t, because I feel dizzy then, suddenly afraid I might fall down right in front of him the way I did yesterday in front of Norma Banks.

He seems to sense this, because when I take a slight step back from him, toward the water, and feel one of my feet begin to slip in the sand, his arms are suddenly around me.

“Sometimes it’s all just—it’s just too damn much—” I say. “I—I can’t even find the right words.”

“Not even you,” he says softly.

“Especially not me,” I say.

Some tough mother I am.

He pulls me closer to him and puts his mouth next to my ear and says, “It’s all going to be all right.”

“I want to believe that so much,” I say, as the tears start to come again.

“I promise,” he says. “Now let’s get you home.”

He knows I have an early morning and knows why. He knows where I’m going. But he keeps one arm firmly around me as we make our way through the sand and up the hill to where we left our sneakers, and where he parked his car, Rip trailing behind us.

“Don’t let go,” I say.

“I will never let go,” he says.

I still feel as if I’m falling.